This week’s question, “What is the one interview question you hope you don’t have to answer?”, produced some very interesting responses, from the humorous, to the expected, to questions that are illegal to ask in the United States. Here’s our take on some of the themes shared in your comments:

Simone got us laughing when she posted: “Is that toilet paper on your shoe?” Yeah, wouldn’t be too awesome to walk into an interview dragging along some TP from your last bathroom break. Though maybe it could be an icebreaker to get both you and the interviewer cracking up about something silly.

We hear you on the “What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses?” questions. We’ve hopefully helped set you on the right track with our post on this topic, but still this isn’t an easy set of questions to answer.

There were also a lot of you who commented about answering the salary question. We have also posted on this issue on Dear Jobsblog, but that was more from the perspective of a potential employee asking about compensation versus telling an interviewer about your current salary. Maybe that’s something we can cover in a future post.

And finally, there is the nebulous question category that many of you picked up on. Those questions usually sound like “Where do you see yourself in 5 years?” or “Why should we hire you”? Okay so these questions aren’t the most creative and though they attempt to give interviewers a big picture of you as a possible employee, there are many other ways to get at who you are and what drives that fire inside you.

Regardless of the situation, there are a lot of questions that interviewers ask that either make us uncomfortable, put us on the spot, or are just downright eye-rolling in their lack of creativity. At the same time we all have to answer these questions at some point in our careers. The best way to handle it? Do your homework and be prepared!